The present invention, in some embodiments thereof, relates to image compression and/or reconstruction and, more particularly, but not exclusively, to image compression in a video.
Over the last years, both video and still image frame achieved high definitions in commercial products. Resolutions of 2, 4 and 8 million pixels per frame are already common in the video industry, whereas resolutions of 16 and even more million pixels per bitmap are already common in the camera market, and cellular handset devices with 8 and 12 million pixels are already marketed.
Various applications, like still image compression and frame-accurate video editing call for coding of independent bitmaps. Coding of such bitmaps poses some difficulties in terms of compression efficiency, progressive transmission, and previewing efficiency. Additionally, stereoscopic imaging is becoming a notable medium as televisions sets capable of 3D viewing are introduced, as are movies such as the notorious Avatar film, generally doubling the volume of image data.
Contemporary techniques typically apply DCT, Wavelet, near-block spatial prediction, and optimized quantization tables, and the results are well known and documented in numerous researches and articles.
In some cases fast de-compression of high resolution frames is important to video editing, where an editor needs to be able to view real time presentation, while the widely used production codecs (e.g. DNxHD of Avid Technology, Inc, and Panasonic's AVC-Intra)) typically do not have any reduced resolution and/or reduced quality presentation ability to present the frames, and others (e.g. ProRes422/444 of Apple, Inc), have a reduced presentation ability at reduced quality, which in many cases are deemed as not satisfactorily efficient.
Using video to compress images is disclosed, for example, in US patent application publication US2008/0159639 that discloses a method for compressing high resolution images as low resolution video, or the US2008/8165843 patent application publication which discloses a hardware architecture for compressing images in a video, where the above cited applications share common inventors as the present application.